The Crimean Sonnets; Zaleski
(1802), Slowacki (1809), Krasinski (1812), the three greatest poets of
Poland excepting only Mickiewicz himself, the Polish critic, Brodzinski.

In Russia, the golden age of literature almost covered the same period
as Mickiewicz's own life--Puschkin, Lermontov, Schukowski, Gogol, to
mention only some of the most important names.

In the eighteen-thirties we find Mickiewicz in Paris, which happened to
be filled just then with a crowd of brilliant Slavic exiles. Here he
became the friend of Chopin, and one of Chopin's most talented pupils--a
young Polish girl--made the first translation of the Sonnets into
French. It was a wonderful and brilliant Paris which Mickiewicz entered.
This was the time when the city was first called "the stepmother of
Genius." Heine was here in exile, and Boerne. It knew the personal
fascination and the denunciative writings of Ferdinand la Salle. It was
the day, too, of Eugene Sue, Berlioz, George Sand, de Musset, Dumas,
Gautier, the Goncourt Brothers, Gavarni, Sainte Beuve, Liszt, Felix
Mendelssohn, Ary Scheffer, Delacroiz, Horace Vernet--to mention only a
few great names at random. Julius Slowacki, Count Krasinski and Adam
Mickiewicz were all here editing their poetry in the midst of this
brilliant life in the inspiring city by the Seine. This period in Paris
signs perhaps the high-water mark of the creative genius of Mickiewicz.
He had already written the Ballads and Romances, the third part of
Dziady, Pan Tadeuz.

The Crimean Sequence belongs to the period of Mickiewicz's youth, the
Vilna period. He joined a society at this time which was looked upon
with disfavor by the Government. At length, because of his continued
participation in it, he was exiled to southern Russia. On that trip,
while he was going toward Odessa, he began the Crimean Sonnets. Their
success was quick and astonishing. They were translated into every
language of Europe. Although the form is the traditional and classic
sonnet form, he makes use of it in a slightly different manner, not
altogether as an exposition of the sentiments of the soul, and the
convictions and emotions of the mind, but as an instrument with which to
sketch what he saw upon this eventful journey. He used the sonnet form
at that period just as Verhaeren used it in "Les Flamandes," to show us
Flanders, and as Albert Samain in "Le Chariot d'Or," to picture the
gardens of Versailles. This is worthy of note. And this we mu